April 19, 2011

On Friday, April 15, California Institute of Integral Studies sponsored its third annual Symposium on Integral Consciousness. This year’s event honored the founders of CIIS, Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri, who served as the Institute’s first two presidents.

The 2011 symposium featured many of the Institute’s faculty, students, and alums, presenting research and reflections on the current state of their disciplines. I didn’t get to every event, but here are a few of the highlights I did attend.

CIIS President Joseph L. Subbiondo kicked off the symposium with a talk on “The Need for Interreligious Dialogue in Higher Education.” He argued forcefully for the importance of religious pluralism in today’s world. Quoting numerous spiritual leaders from a variety of faiths, Subbiondo made a case that the United States is one of the most religiously diverse countries, and that higher education has a leading role to play in expanding understanding among different faiths, and spiritual literacy.

Don Hanlon Johnson, founder of the CIIS Somatic Psychology program, followed with a talk on “Embodied Spiritual Practices and Socially Transformative Service.” He spoke about the importance of finding common humanity with people of a variety of faiths and cultures through focusing on our shared experiences, lived through our bodies. Participants experienced this first-hand by greeting another person next to them with a warm touch of hands and a person-to-person exchange of information.

Jorge Ferrer of the CIIS East-West Psychology program provided a thought-provoking overview of the future of religion. He noted that religions were becoming more and more hybridized, learning from one another. He also showed how religions are rapidly changing in response to developments in society, from feminism to gay rights to the ecological crisis.

At a panel on "Goddesses in Conversation," Mara Keller, cofounder of the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS, advocated for including feminine forms of deity in worship and ritual, recounting her own path to the goddess. Jim Ryan of the Asian and Comparative Studies program spoke about the Institute’s sri yantra symbol, describing how it actually represents a tantric union of the goddess Kali with her consort, as well as the intertwining of the sacred and mundane. He also chanted in Sanskrit the opening verses of a prayer with the thousand names of the goddess. Hilary Anderson, an early alum of CIIS who studied with the Institute’s founders, spoke about the spiritual lessons inherent in life, from the daily existence of couples to archetypes of the goddess.

There were dozens of other speakers at the conference. Many participants praised and thanked CIIS Archivist Bahman Shirazi, who organized the event. This was the third annual Symposium on Integral Consciousness, and as CIIS Library Director Lyse Dyckman said, “When something happens once, it’s innovation. When it happens twice, it’s a trend. When it happens a third time, it’s a tradition.”

February 26, 2009

“Sound archives have reached a critical point in their
history marked by the simultaneous rapid deterioration of unique original
materials, the development of powerful new digital technologies, and the
consequent decline of analog formats and media.” (Indiana University Digital
Library Program 2008)

That sonorous prose echoes the same dismay that any of us
might feel when we look at stacks of audiotapes – often rare gems, precious
memories, irreplaceable treasures – that we cannot play anymore. Perhaps we no
longer own a cassette player, perhaps the tapes themselves have begun to
stretch, warble, even – horrors! – snap with use. What to do? Current wisdom
points to digitizing old(er) analog sound recordings, as a way to preserve them
as well as to listen to them.

We are currently in the process of digitizing selected
audiotapes from Library and from CIIS Archives audio collections. We have
chosen to start with lecture and other spoken word recordings that are not
readily available elsewhere (in some cases, the only known recording). Once
digitized, we’re saving these as .mp3 files, since this seems to be the most
easily played format currently in use. We are storing archival copies online,
and are copying files for use now onto compact disk; however, we’re planning in
the future to make these files available to the CIIS community as direct
downloads from the CIIS Library catalog.

The following recordings from previous CIIS sponsored
conferences and lecture series are available on a CD, in MP3 format:

Robert Thurman Lecture Series (1996)

Dreams, Spirit & Shadow Conference (1996)

Ayahuasca Conference (2000)

Huston Smith lecture Series (2002)

Third International Conference on Integral Psychology (2003)

Also, available on a CD, in MP3 format are several previously unpublished
interviews originally aired on radio in the 1970s, with such luminaries as
Joseph Campbell, Humphrey Osmond, Julian Jaynes, Clive Baxter, Rinpoche Chogyam
Trungpa, U. Utah Phillips and Jerry Garcia. And we have just reached an
agreement with the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) to digitize
recordings from the previous ITA conferences. Look for these in the coming months.